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Posted on 10/25/2003 1:39:38 AM PDT by goldstategop
Opponents labeled it the "blank check initiative."
"When you peel away the window dressing, people realize that this is about whether people want Sacramento politicians to have an easier route to raise taxes," said Al Lundeen, spokesman for Californians Against Higher Taxes, a political action committee organized to fight the initiative.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
If you are in California just watch television next March election day to see it pass.
California voters approved a similar measure in 2000. Proposition 39 decreased the local vote needed to pass school bonds from 66% to 55%.
It was sold as a statewide school accountability proposition. My own local school district at the time, San Juan in Carmichael, actually put together and mailed out a slick "report" on the wonderful things a local "accountability" measure had done for schools. No mention of Prop 39 in the "report." The "report" came just days before the election.
I wrote a letter to the superintendent, a guy named General Davies if I remember correctly, complaining about using school resources to campaign for Prop. 39. His reply said he'd passed my letter on to the district's legal department.
The campaign to get this legislative "accountability" act on the ballot was sold as a way to make the legislature do its job and penalize the members by not paying them if they did not do their job. A very popular idea.
It will pass. This is California. I bet Arnold will not actively oppose it.
BTW, the closer we get to the election the less the issue of the votes needed to raise taxes will be mentioned in the state's Democrat "news"papers like lat and the Sac Bee. It will be all reporting on legislative accountability.
Actually this was not a partisan election.
That's the key question.
Really. Partisan elections in the US, by definition, have one candidate representing each party through a primary process.
The recent recall election was a personality contest. Party affiliation had little to do with the outcome. As an example Schwarzenegger would have won regardless of his political registration. Running as a Democrat Schwarzenegger would have won by a slightly smaller margin but he still would have won.
To intimate that California is Republican country based on the combined outcome of the recall election is naive at best. The primary motivation of the electorate in the recall process was frustration over the disconnect between the ruling elete and the will of the mob with most of the hatred focused on a single individual. Secoundary to that was the fear that two of the three replacement candidates were too extreme to goveron. Political affilitation did not matter.
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